Team Yandex has defeated Team Liquid in a thrilling five-game conclusion to PGL Wallachia Season 7. Pushed to their limit in their 3-2 victory over Liquid, Yandex persevered to lift the trophy after a near seven-hour series.
A near flawless tournament, that saw Team Yandex lose just one series in the entire event, reached its peak with one of the longest days of professional Dota in history for their opponents. Here’s how it went down:
Team Yandex had secured the Grand Finals berth yesterday by defeating BetBoom Team yesterday. With substitute offlaner Dmitry “DM” Dorokhin in their ranks, the team had seemed unstoppable the entire tournament, as mentioned, losing just as single series the entire event to HEROIC.
Opposing them were Team Liquid, who at the end of this tournament had played one of the longest days of professional Dota 2 in history. And in the first two games of the finals series, frankly, TL looked tired. Yandex, with late scaling heroes and a complete shutdown of Team Liquid’s early-game pressure out performed their opponents bringing the series to 2-0.
Martin “Saksa” Sazdov and co. pushed Team Liquid to the limit. Image Credit: PGL
With elimination on the line, Team Liquid finally managed to wake up in game three. Clutch ultimates from Erik “tOfu” Enge, an incredible performance by Michał “Nisha” Jankowski, and a rare Brewmaster pick from Marcus “Ace” Christensen forced a game four from the series.
And what a game four, as Team Liquid broke out one of the most unique drafts in the tournament, baiting with the Tinker, before giving it to Tofu on support, and giving Nisha the Huskar pick. In what would prove to be the shortest game of the series, TL pushed it to game five.
But Yandex wasn’t done, and wasn’t ready to let the reverse sweep happen. Instead, super-sub DM and Ilya “CHIRA_JUNIOR” Chirtsov, who earlier in the tournament Nisha had ranked last out of the top five mid laners remaining in the event, on his trademark Invoker, punished Team Liquid. Unable to land their hyper team-fight focused ultimates, and pushed into their base TL finally crumbled after almost an hour of play, and a five game series over six and a half hours long.
Image Credit: PGL
As mentioned, Team Liquid had faced one of the longest days of competitive Dota 2 ever recorded. Their first game of the day against BetBoom Team, became the second longest best-of-three Dota 2 game of all-time, only surpassed by the infamous Cloud9 vs. Scaryfacezz match that featured a three hour and twenty minutes long match.
What’s more, according to Dota 2 stats maven Ben Steenhuisen, Team Liquid officially became the longest day of professional play on record. Team Liquid played eight games of Dota 2 for almost eight hours over a 12-hour period. Which is all to say, it’s amazing they lasted for so long against a team of Yandex’s calibre.
Yandex walk away from PGL Wallachia Season 7 $300,000 richer, and with likely a direct invite to the next edition. Team Liquid claim $175,000 of the $1,000,000 total prize pool, and no doubt we’ll also see them back at Season 8.
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Featured Image Credit: PGL
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